Minitooler

Compress a GIF — make animated GIFs much smaller

Compress animated GIFs in your browser: smarter colours, lossy compression and frame differencing make most GIFs 40–80% smaller while keeping the animation, speed and transparency. No upload.

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What people use it for

  • Shrink a screen recording GIF so it fits in a GitHub issue, Slack or Jira ticket.
  • Get a reaction GIF under the Discord or forum upload limit.
  • Make GIFs made from video files far smaller without re-recording them.
  • Speed up pages and emails that use animated GIFs.
  • Compress a whole folder of GIFs at once with Pro.

This GIF compressor makes animated GIFs much smaller without turning them into a blurry mess. Drop a GIF, choose Light, Balanced or Strong, compare the before and after animation and download. Everything runs in your browser; your GIF is never uploaded.

How it makes GIFs smaller

The compressor uses the same tricks as professional GIF optimizers. It stores only the pixels that change from frame to frame and crops each frame to that area. It builds one shared colour palette and uses calm, patterned dithering instead of random noise. Lossy compression allows tiny, invisible colour differences so the GIF's own compression finds longer repeats, which is the biggest saving. Frames that look identical are merged without changing the timing.

Need it even smaller?

Turn on Fewer frames to halve the frame rate while keeping the same length, or Smaller size to scale the GIF to 75%. If you can post a video instead, convert the GIF to MP4: it is usually 5–10× smaller again. Making a GIF from a video? Video to GIF can also save animated WebP. To cut frames or change the speed first, use the GIF Frame Editor. Still images and GIFs can also go through the Image Compressor, which uses the same GIF engine.

How it works

  1. 1

    Drop your GIF

    Add an animated or still GIF. It is read in your browser, and an estimated new size appears for each option.

  2. 2

    Pick how much smaller

    Choose Light, Balanced or Strong. Turn on Fewer frames or Smaller size if you need an even smaller file.

  3. 3

    Compare and download

    Watch the before and after animation side by side, then download. If the GIF can't get smaller, you keep your original.

Frequently asked questions

Why are GIFs so big?
GIF is a format from 1987. Every frame is a full picture limited to 256 colours, compressed with a simple method (LZW) that only finds exact repeats. Video formats like MP4 store just what moves between frames and use far better compression, so a 1 MB video clip easily becomes a 10 MB GIF. Noisy dithering from converters makes it worse, because random dots never repeat exactly.
How much smaller will my GIF get?
Most GIFs become 40–80% smaller on Balanced with little visible difference. GIFs made from video, memes with a still background and screen recordings shrink the most. Small or already optimized GIFs shrink less, and if the result would be bigger, you get your original back. The estimate on each option is calculated from a sample of your GIF before you start.
Which option should I pick?
Light looks the same as the original and usually saves 30–70%. Balanced is the recommended middle and is hard to tell apart at normal size. Strong gives the smallest GIF, with some visible grain or streaks in smooth areas. Fewer frames and Smaller size add big extra savings when you need to fit an upload limit.
Does it keep the animation speed, looping and transparency?
Yes. Frame timings, the loop count (forever, or a set number of times) and transparent areas are kept. Fewer frames drops every second frame but makes the remaining frames last longer, so the animation keeps its total length. Frames that do not change are merged without changing the timing.
Is my GIF uploaded?
No. The GIF is decoded and re-encoded in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server, so private screen recordings stay on your device.
Should I use MP4 or WebP instead of GIF?
If the place you post to accepts it, yes: the same animation as an MP4 or animated WebP is usually 5–10× smaller than even a well compressed GIF. Most chat apps and social sites play MP4 like a GIF. Use GIF when you need it to work everywhere, for example in email or old forums. You can convert with GIF to MP4 on Minitooler.
What is included in Free and Pro?
Free compresses one GIF at a time up to the per-file size shown on the page, within your daily allowance. Pro removes the daily allowance and compresses up to 20 GIFs (200 MB) at once with a ZIP download. A batch counts as one use.
How large a GIF can I compress?
Each frame can be up to 16 megapixels, with up to 5,000 frames, and very long, large GIFs are limited by how much work a browser can do. Big GIFs take longer on phones. Smaller size and Fewer frames also make processing faster.

GIF compression is Minitooler's own code. Colour palettes use the quantizer from UPNG.js by Photopea (MIT): licence text.